No easy answers to gun access dilemma

On my first reading of Skip Berrien's June 13 letter, "Unfettered gun access challenges Seacoast," it appeared to be a fairly innocuous anti-gun message; however, a second, more careful, look highlighted his sentence, "So it's time to take on the problem of too many unnecessary firearms in our community." Yikes. He's talking about "confiscation" — or, did I miss something?

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seacoastonline.com

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Posted Jun. 17, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Posted Jun. 17, 2014 at 2:00 AM

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To the Editor:

On my first reading of Skip Berrien's June 13 letter, "Unfettered gun access challenges Seacoast," it appeared to be a fairly innocuous anti-gun message; however, a second, more careful, look highlighted his sentence, "So it's time to take on the problem of too many unnecessary firearms in our community." Yikes. He's talking about "confiscation" — or, did I miss something?

OK, let's talk about confiscation. Whose guns will be confiscated? Which guns are unnecessary? Those of us who care about procurement, possession and legal use of firearms know that the first step toward confiscation is "registration." Accordingly, the anti-gunners, including Berrien, are constantly scheming to enact legislation that will openly call for registration, or will try to accomplish it by subterfuge (e.g. label it as a "background check").

Regardless of even the most draconian laws to prohibit firearms ownership, just remember that the "bad" guys don't obey the laws. There will always be lots of guns out there — it's just that, proportionately, if confiscations are instituted, more "bad" guys will be armed than is currently the case. Firearms homicides, though regrettable, will continue; hence emphasis on firearms confiscation is unlikely to be an effective remedy.

For the present time, it appears that the potentially most effective means to reduce firearms homicides is to identify those in our population who are mentally unstable and prohibit them from procuring and/or possessing firearms. Unfortunately, in our "politically correct society" it is virtually impossible to identify those people —it might interfere with their "rights."